Were you expecting to be on the battlefield? Get back in the rear, Sauron.

Fable Legends pits legendary heroes against less-than legendary villains, both of which can be controlled by players. But if you were expecting your villain to go toe-to-toe with the good guys, forget it; your true villain has other people do the dirty work, says Lionhead.

This Xbox One exclusive is set in the Age of Heroes, with four human, or AI, players attempting to complete a quest while the villain, again human or AI, puts a stop to their pesky interference. But the villain doesn't physically manifest on the battlefield. Instead, the villain gets to control the monsters, pitting the most powerful creatures at its disposal against the oh-so-dashing heroes. SmartGlass control is doable, but not essential, and it's even possible for a villain to play via SmartGlass in the same room as the hero player.

So it's a glorified version of Dungeon Land? You'd think the ultimate pay off for the villain is to be able to step into the arena after their minions have been destroyed, turn into a giant dragon, and lay waste to the heroes. You're not much of a main bad guy then, you're just the spiteful hand of god who never interacts with the heroes directly.

Damn. Reading through the linked articles, I can find plenty about single player for the Hero side, but nothing for the villains. Having an asynchronous multiplayer mode is cool, but I'd hate for villains to not be playable in single player. If being able to play the villain is a selling point you should be able to play the damn villain.

Falterfire:Damn. Reading through the linked articles, I can find plenty about single player for the Hero side, but nothing for the villains. Having an asynchronous multiplayer mode is cool, but I'd hate for villains to not be playable in single player. If being able to play the villain is a selling point you should be able to play the damn villain.

BlackHazard:This sucks this was one of the few Xbox One games I was actually looking forward to the other being Quantum Break.

Well you guys need to think about one thing. If they just put in a villain that could stand toe-to-toe with the players, then it would devolve into just people sprinting to the heroes and trying to take them on, Dark Souls Invasion style. I can just imagine the thousands of kiddies who would play the villain and just keep trying to rush players over and over.

HOWEVER, having said that, if there's anything to complain about IMAO, it's the forced 4 player or 1-player-3-NPC coop. I am REALLY not a fan of party based games. THE ONLY one I ever really liked was Neverwinter Night's system. And that was only because it was a nice hands-off approach. The NPC's took care of themselves and didn't need any baby-sitting whatsoever. Not just that, you would get to a point in power where you wouldn't really need NPC's anymore.

I just don't know why they couldn't institute a sytem like Borderlands where, if more players or NPC's join, the bad guys will scale in power appropriately. That way, all play-styles can be accommodated.

That kinda sounds pretty cool, actually. It's like a more streamlined D&d run then. with the whole "Chooses which monsters are spawned and all that jazz.I always knew the DM was evil. Of course I did, I'm my main group's DM! Mwahahahaha